Fitting and methods for making the same
OwnerW. Sidney Aitkeninventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A unitary fitting for fluid piping systems. A body has a socket member, and a hub member fits in the socket member. The members define the bottom and sides of a ring groove, and a resilient sealing ring fits in the groove. Each of the members has a wall which is adapted to be brought into abutment with the other, and a structural joinder joins the walls. A preferred means to form the structural joinder is to rotate the hub member in the socket member while the walls are in abutment, whereby the frictional forces will generate sufficient heat to cause the walls to fuse together, especially when they are formed of a thermoplastic plastic material, such as polyvinyl chloride.
Claims27
A fitting comprising a body having a flow passage therethrough;
- a socket member on said body having an opening, a central axis, a peripheral socket abutment wall, and a peripheral socket sidewall in said opening;
- a ring-like hub member in said opening, said hub member having a peripheral hub abutment wall, a peripheral ring groove face, and a hub sidewall;
- a peripheral ring groove bottom surface on one of said members facing inwardly toward said central axis and adjacent to the said ring groove face;
- said members being made of a thermoplastic material, which material is fusible to like material by motion fusion, said abutment walls extending non-parallel to the axis, and being joined together solely by fusion of the surface materials of the abutment walls, all radial dimensions of the socket member from the socket sidewall to and including the opening end of the socket member being greater than any radial dimension of the hub member, there being no radial overlap of the hub member by any part of the socket member at said end of the socket member;
- and a resilient sealing ring in the ring groove formed by the ring groove face and ring groove bottom surface.
The method of assembling a ring-shaped hub member of a fitting in a circular opening in a socket member comprising pressing an abutting wall of each member against the other with a resilient ring placed in a ring groove that is contiguous to both abutting walls, said ring groove having an edge adjacent to both of said abutting walls which forms a peripheral reservoir, and generating heat by means of motion fusion, whereby to fuse the members together at said abutting walls and to discharge slag from the joinder into said reservoir, the wall thickness of the hub member at the point of fusion being greater than the wall thickness of the socket member, whereby distortion of the socket member as a consequence of the heat is minimized.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.